DAVIDSON COLLEGE Department of Economics

DAVIDSON COLLEGE
Department of Economics

Gender and Economics	Kelly A. Chaston
Economics 227S	Office: Preyer 04
Fall 2001	Phone: 2190
Class Meeting: T,Th 1-2:15	E-Mail: kechaston@davidson.edu
Chambers 221	Home Phone: 704-895-0572
Office Hours: TBA and by appointment.

Required Text:

The Economics of Gender, by Joyce Jacobsen, Blackwell Publishing Cambridge MA, 1998.

The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values, by Nancy Folbre The New Press, New York, 2001.

Course Objective:

To explore and critique the explanations proffered by the discipline of economics regarding observed gender differences in economic outcomes.

Some topics covered include the social construction of gender, time allocation between the household and the market, theories of discrimination, and occupational ghettoization and segregation. As well, numerous public policy issues such as comparable worth, anti-poverty programs, and affirmative action will be discussed.

Course Requirements:

You are responsible for the material covered in lectures and the required reading. Economics 101 is a prerequisite for this course.

Grading Procedure:

Class Participation / Presentations 15%

Journal 15%

Book Report 15%

Short Papers / Essays / Problem sets 30%

Research Paper 25%

Journal:

An electronic submission of consisting of a 'journal entry' for each of the assigned articles for that week's reading will be required. The entries are to be typed. They are not to exceed 2 pages, and I would expect that most would be less than 1 page. They should reflect the author's major points and your thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment, among other issues.

Problem Sets:

A number of assignments will be collected for grading. They must be handed in at the beginning of the class in which they are due.

Short Papers / Essays:

A number of essay topics will be assigned. They will require an independently written 2-4 page response. No outside-of-class research will be necessary for these assignments. The assigned readings and lecture notes will suffice as sources. Due to the structure of the course, the writing assignments are concentrated towards the end of the course.

Book Report:

On Folbre's, The Invisible Hand. Not to exceed 10 pages.

Term Paper:*

The required research paper will consist of a 10-12 page (exclusive of graphs, charts, etc.) analysis of a topic of your choice. The topic must be approved by me.

Deadlines to be met:

Oct 4 - A 1-page industry proposal and source bibliography. (This assignment accounts for 5% of your paper grade.)

Nov 6 - A 3-5 page outline of the paper as well as an updated bibliography (this bibliography should be restricted to sources which you have in hand and are planning to use). (This assignment accounts for 5% of your paper grade.)

Nov 20 - A rough draft of the paper with complete bibliography. To be handed into my office by 5 PM. (This accounts for 40% of your paper grade.)

December 12th, 4 PM, in my office. The final paper.

,* All Paper specifications will be stipulated in a separate hand-out. It is the responsibility of the student to adhere to all such specifications.

Writing Course Designation:

As this course is designated a Writing Course, the composition and presentation of all assignments will be factors in grading. Take particular care that all written work is carefully done and professionally presented.

Honor Code:

Strict compliance to the College's academic honesty and integrity policies will be adhered to throughout this course.

Absences:

It is expected that all students will make a concerted effort to attend all classes. The reviews and written assignments will be based upon material presented in class and will include subjects and examples not covered in the text. It is the responsibility of the student to keep abreast of announcements made in class, and to obtain the class notes from a fellow student.

Attached is a proposed outline for the course -- it is subject to change. It is the responsibility of the student to keep up with any changes made to the course syllabus.

GENDER: COURSE OUTLINE

PART I: Framing the Issue

Week 1	Introduction (No journal entries for any of these readings.) 8/20 Blau, Francine D., "Trends in the Well-Being of American Women, 1970-1995, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXVI (march 1998) 112-165. Chapter 1, Jacobsen Chapter 2, Jacobsen Langley, Winston E., and Fox, Vivian, excerpts from, Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, USA, 1994.
Week 2	The Social Construction of Gender (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) 8/27 "Doing Gender," The Social Construction of Gender, ed. By Judith Lorber and Susan A. Farrell, pp. 13-35. "Family Structure and Feminine Personality," by Nancy Chodorow in Feminist Frontiers III, eds Laurel Richardson and Verta Taylor, pp. 82-98. "The Social-Institutional Bases of Gender Stratification: Japan as an Illustrative Case," Mary C. Brinton, American Journal of Sociology, Vol 94, (2), Sept. 1988, pp 330-334.
Weeks 2&3 Neoclassical Economics and Feminist Theory
Week 2	Feminism and Science (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) 8/27 Stephan, Paula E., "The Economics of Science," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXIV (September 1996), pp. 1199-1235. Auernbach, Feminism and Federally Funded Social Science: Notes from Inside," The Annals of the American Academy, 571, September 2000, 30-41. "After the Science Question in Feminism," by Sandra Harding, in Feminist Frontiers III, 12-19.
Week 3	Feminism and Economics 9/3 (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) "Value-Free or Valueless? Notes on the Pursuit of Detachment in Economics," by Julie A. Nelson, History of Political Economy, Vol 25, 1993, pp. 121-143. "Can Feminist Thought Improve Economics?" by Myra Strober, AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 1994, 143-147. "Feminist Thought and Economics: Or, What do the Visigoths Know?" by Diana L. Strassman, AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 1994, pp153-157. (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) "Introduction: The Social Construction of Economics and the Social Construction of Gender," by Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson in, Beyond Economic Man, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993, pp. 1-16. Nelson, Julie A., "Feminism and Economics", JEP, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1995, 131-148.

PART II: Why Do Men and Women Work?

Week 4	Chapter 3, Jacobsen The Household As An Economic Unit 9/10 (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) Hartmann, Heidi, "The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The example of Housework, Signs, Spring 1981, 366-394. "Alternative Perspectives on Distribution Within Marriage," by Julie A. Nelson in AEA Papers and Proceedings, 5/94, pp. 126-142. Bargaining (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) McElroy, Marjorie B., and Horney, Mary Jean, "Nash-Bargained Household Decisions: Toward a Generalization of the Theory of Demand," International Economic Review, Vol 22, Issue 2 (Jun 1981) 333-349. Lundberg, Shelly and Pollak, Robert A., "Separate Spheres Bargaining and the Marriage Market," The Journal of Political Economy, Vol 101, Issue 6, 988-1010.
Week 5	9/18: Book Report Due, Discussion Labor Force Participation - Analysis of trends 9/17 Chapter 4, Jacobsen (Journal Entry due before Thursday.) Goldin, Claudia, "Life-Cycle Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol 7, Issue 1 (Jan 1989), 20-47.
Week 6	Labor Force Participation: Consequences for the Family 9/24 Chapter 5, Jacobsen (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) Hochschild, Arli "The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home," by in Feminist Frontiers III, pp. 258-262. Robinson, Warren C., "The Economic Theory of Fertility Over Three Decades", Population Studies, Vol 51, 1997, pp. 63-74. Folbre, Nancy, "Children as Public Goods," AEA P&Ps, 5/94, pp. 86-89.
Week 7	The Feminization of Poverty 10/1 Welfare reform: Policy Application: Part II - Welfare reform, Jacobsen (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) "Women and Child Care," by M. Margaret Conway, David Ahearn and Gertrude Steuernagel, Chapter 8 in Women and Public Policy, pp. 148-168. "Female Headship, Feminization of Poverty and Welfare," by M. Kimenyi and J. Mbaku, Southern Economic Journal, 7/95, pp. 44-51. "Welfare is Not for Women: Why the War on Poverty Cannot Conquer the Feminization of Poverty," by Diana Pearce, in Women, the State and Welfare, ed Linda Gordon, 1990, pp. 265-278. (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) "Children's Prospects and Children's Policy," by Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, in Poverty Programs, University of Wisconsin--Madison, Institute for Research and Poverty, 1993, pp. 239-261. Ellwood, David T., "Anti-Poverty Policy for Families in the next Century: From Welfare to Work--and Worries," JEP, Winter 2000, Vol 14, No. 1, 187-198.

PART III: THE EARNINGS PUZZLE: WHY DO WOMEN EARN LESS THAN MEN? Theories that account for gender earnings differences

Week 8	"Work and Wages in the Neoclassical Model," Chapter 4, in Unlevel Playing Fields, 10/8 pp 41-84, by Randy Albrega, Robert Drago, Steven Shulman, McGraw-Hill, 1997. (No journal entry for this reading.) (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) Blau, Francine D. and Kahn, Lawrence M., "Gender Differences in Pay," JEP, Fall 2000, Vol 14, No 4., 75-100. Folbre, nancy and Nelson, Julie A., "For Love or Money --Or Both?" JEP, Fall 2000, Vol 14, No 4.,123-140. "Gender Stratification in Contemporary Urban Japan," by Mary C. Brinton, American Sociological review, Aug 1989, Vol 54, pp 549-564.
Weeks 9&10 Gender segregation in the Workplace
Week 9	Chapter 6, Jacobsen (Thursday of Fall Break) 10/15 (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.)
Week 10	"Bringing the Men Back In: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation of Women's 10/22 Work," by Barbara Reskin, Chapter 7 in The Social Construction of Gender, ed. by Judith Lorber and Susan A. Farrell, pp. 141-156. "Male Secretaries," by Rosemary Pringle, in Doing 'Women's Work': Men in Nontraditional Occupations, ed. Christine L. Williams, Sage Pubs, 1993 pp. 128-151. (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) "Measuring the Effect of Occupational Sex and Race Composition on Earnings," by Elaine Sorensen, in Pay Equity: Empirical Inquiries, eds. R. T. Micheal, H. I. Hartmann, & B. O'Farrell, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1989,pp. 49-69.
Week 11	Causes of Earnings Differences: Human Capital Theory 10/29 Chapter 7, Jacobsen (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) "Women and Educational Policy," by M. Margaret Conway, David Ahearn and Gertrude Steuernagel, Chapter 2 in Women and Public Policy, pp. 148-168. AAUW Report, "How Schools Shortchange Girls: A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education," The Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, AAUW Educational Foundation and National Education Association. (Excerpts - no journal entry required.) (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) "Human Capital and the Gender Earnings Gap: A response to feminist critiques," by Solomon W. Polachek, in Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspectives on Economics, eds. Edith Kuiper and Jolande Sap, pp. 61-89. Vella, Francis, "Gender Roes and Human Capital Investment: The relationship between Traditional Attitudes and Female Labour Market Performance", Economica, New Series, Vol 61, Issue 242 (May 1994), 191-211.
Week 12	Causes of Earnings Differences: Compensating Differentials 11/5 Chapter 8, Jacobsen
Weeks 12&13 Causes of Earnings Differences: Discrimination
Week 12	Chapter 9, Jacobsen 11/5 (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) Goldin, Claudia, and Rouse, Cecelia, "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of 'Blind' Auditions on Female Musicians," AER, Vol 90, No. 4, September 2000, 715-741.
Week 13	(Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) 11/12 Reeves, Martha E., "Chapter 2: Women's Subordination in the Workplace", Suppressed, Forced Out and Fired: How Successful Women Lose Their Jobs, Quorum Books, Westport, CT, 2000, pp 11-40. Reeves, Martha E., "Chapter3 : Understanding Women's Subordination," Ibid, 41-64. "Title IX: The Politics of Sex Discrimination," Chapter 5, Women and Public Policies: Reassessing Gender Politics, by Joyce Gelb and Marian Palley, University Press of Virginia, 1996, pp. 93-128. Week 13 Policy Application part III: Comparable Worth 11/12 (Journal Entries due before Thursday.) "Occupational Segregation, Compensating Differentials, and Comparable Worth, by Randall K. Filer, in Pay Equity: Empirical Inquiries, eds. Robert T. Micheal, Heidi I. Hartmann, and Brigid O'Farrell, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1989, pp. 153-175 "Steps Involved in Applying Comparable Worth," by Morley Gunderson, in Comparable Worth and Gender Discrimination, An International Perspective, Chapter 5, International Labor Office, Geneva.
Week 14	Affirmative Action 11/26 (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) "Affirmative Action within Different Labor Markets," by Clark Ross, photocopy. Holzer, Harry and Neumark, David, "Assessing Affirmative Action," JEL, Vol XXXVIII (September 2000), pp 483-568.
Week 15	Public Policy - General 12/3 (Journal Entries due before Tuesday.) "The Impact of Public Policy Programs on the Status of Women," Nancy S. Barrett, AEA, Papers and Proceedings, May 1982, pp 160-165. "Women's Work, Family Diversity, and Employment Instability: Public Policy Responses to New Realities," Heidi Hartmann, Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, January 7, 1991, made available through the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "What Can Economics Contribute to Social Policy," by Lawrence H. Summers, AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 1989, pp 177-183.